YouTube's/Google's victory last week in the Viacom copyright legal battle was called t a "huge" victory for entrepreneurs and the Web in general. I understand this in the context that other entrepreneurs under similar circumstances won't have to sell their companies, as YouTube did. But is this a win for the Web in the long term: creating a situation where content owners' work can be posted without their consent or compensation?

With the avalanche of video and technology that's plowing through the consumer marketplace, is there a chance that the broadcast market will survive? As the upfront market wraps up, advertisers will spend billions on broadcast, cable and syndication programming. But as we all know, agencies and clients are preparing to invest in "video" as well -- not VOD, and not podcasting per se -- but specifically online video.

Last week, Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that over the past few years he's suffered from Twitter envy, probably focusing a bit too much on that media darling. Today, with location-based startups getting all the attention, one would think that Zuckerberg is about to let history repeat itself by worrying too much about how to recalibrate Facebook to clash against upstarts Foursquare, Gowalla and company. That's not the battle Zuckerberg needs to focus on, at all.Truth is, while Google is planning to launch Facebook competitor Google Me, Zuckerberg should focus more on online video, in particular the lessons that both …

In the last decade online video has grown from an esoteric hobbyist activity into a multi-million dollar business built around a thriving ecosystem of content creators, publishing and monetization platforms, and various enabling technologies, services and devices.

What type of content will surround our ad? How many people will see our ad? As the 2011 upfronts grow nearer, and we see what is proving to be just the beginning of the massive shift of marketing dollars from TV to online video, these are questions that face all of us in the digital world every day.

On a recent flight to New York I had a chance to catch up on my reading, and a statistic in one magazine's cover story hit me like a load of bricks: The median age of prime-time television viewers is nearing 51 years old. This means that more than half of all prime-time viewers are outside of the golden demographic of 18-49. The medium that has long been synonymous with massive reach is quickly becoming the most efficient way to reach lots of old people!

Targeted pre-roll ads are now the norm when working with the video ad networks. The majority of buyers still use CTR as their primary success metric, and they can now buy specific demographics/psychographics at the impression level to maximize that CTR.

The mechanics of acquiring audience through investments in digital media has begun to fundamentally alter the way in which video is produced, marketed, and distributed. This transition is nowhere more apparent than in the world of branded entertainment. Online branded entertainment video series are judged based upon the quality and size of the audience they accumulate in support of brand goals. In order to ensure these goals are reached, studios and agencies use a variety of tools to build this audience. But one of the most important arrows in this quiver is the media buy.

The past five years saw a wave of investment in all types of video companies.Now expect to see a lot of consolidation in the months and year to come. Let's focus on what consolidation will look like among: content producers; those handling advertising creation, management and networks; and those in content aggregation, file-hosting, sharing and distribution.

The focus of IAB's Innovation Days conference during Internet Week NY is "Content may be king, but all the power still lies in the hands of consumers." As advertisers increasingly embrace branded content and online video as a primary marketing channel, this concept could not ring truer. While research companies like Nielsen charge ahead in measuring and quantifying how different consumer groups respond to online video and advertising, I thought it might be helpful in the meantime to share what I think are the top reasons your target audience just isn't into your online videos: